It's Time to Be Plastic Conscious

My junior year of college, I was lucky enough to land myself in a tropical ecology class that had a lab component in Belize. I was thrilled, periodically pulling out my new snorkeling gear and going over my research proposal weeks before we left for Belize. I expected bright sun, balmy breezes, biting insects, and a remote research center in the middle of an ocean reserve. All of these things turned out to be true, but after flying on a plane from Miami to Belize, taking a smaller plane south, riding in a van for an hour, and then taking a two hour boat ride out to Middle Caye in Glover's Reef, I surprisingly didn't feel isolated. I had traveled far, there was no internet, drinking water was restricted to one filter on the whole island, and showers were warmed by the sun. My class and I were basically the only ones on the island, and yet I felt painfully aware of the outside world. Stretched wide across half of this tiny island was plastic.
The people who take care of the island are meticulous and the surrounding islands, while open for tourism, are not large scale attractions. This plastic did not all originate there. The plastic problem at Middle Caye is far from unique. The oceans are all connected, and what is dumped in one ocean can find its way to another. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a prime example of how worldwide trash can end up miles from where it originated. The image below is a map of ocean currents, with a shaded region that represents the location of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This is where trash, mostly plastics from North America and Asia, combines to form one large area of debris. While the exact size of the patch isn't known, some scientists estimate that it covers twice the size of Texas, and floats down 20 feet into the ocean. It is estimated that for every 2.2 pounds of plankton in those waters, there are about 13.2 pounds of plastic. That means that in this area, plastic outweighs the most abundant group of organisms in the sea.

Thus we reach the crux of the problem. To this day we still do not have an effective way of destroying plastic when we are done with it, and plastic can take up to 1,000 years to degrade on its own. However, as plastics sit in the water, they are broken down by the sun into tiny pieces called microplastics. While no country will take responsibility for cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, no one is even certain how exactly to go about cleaning it. Any net with mesh fine enough to grab microplastics will trap fish and other animals within it, killing the animals hardy enough to still live in those waters.

Yet plastics continue to reek havoc on marine life just by their very existence. First, as plastics break down they release toxins. My mother always threw out food if I tried to microwave it in plastic tupperware. While science has not come to a definitive conclusions about the effects of the small amounts of plastic that leach into your food, there has been some concern that the BPAs might cause cancer later. Regardless, consider that plastic is made from petroleum gases. While the levels we are exposed to from melting plastic in the microwave are deemed safe by the FDA, the continual breakdown of plastic in the ocean leaches more and more toxins into the water as more and more plastic accumulates.
Second, many species of marine animals end up consuming plastics. Chris Jordan has done a heartbreaking photo series of Albatross birds that have died. As they decay, the killer plastic filling their stomachs becomes more evident. The particular birds photographed are from Midway Atoll, an island that is more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

It isn't just birds that eat it either. A couple of weeks ago a Cuvier's beaked whale washed up on the shores of Norway, dying, with 30 plastic bags in its stomach. Sea turtles as well often fall victim to eating plastics. A grocery bag floating in the water looks suspiciously like a jellyfish, one of the favorite foods of the massive leatherback sea turtle. Once an animal consumes plastic, the plastic takes up permanent residence, never getting digested, never leaving the body, and clogging the stomach, preventing the animals from eating real food. Eventually, they starve to death, their bodies full of plastic.
Despite this ever increasing disaster, there is still some hope. In 2016, a new study came out that found that waxworms, also known as Indian Mealmoths, are capable of consuming and breaking down polyethylene, surviving on a diet of styrofoam. This breakthrough, while providing an exciting new way to break down plastics, is still far from solving the plastic crisis. In the meantime, however, there is a lot that we can do to help mitigate our impact. While recycling is a good thing to do, recycling doesn't make plastic disappear. It simply converts one plastic object into another plastic object. The first line of defense against ocean pollution should always be reduction. Here are some easy ways to reduce your plastic consumption:

1. Invest in reusable bags for groceries and store them in your car. In Europe and even some grocery stores in America they have started charging extra for every plastic bag you use. This trend is already gaining momentum. It's best to save some money and the planet and invest in reusable bags now.
• As a note, if you do forget your reusable bags one day, figure out another way that you can use the plastic bags you brought home.
2. When you can, get glass containers. Ziploc bags and plastic tupperware are convenient, but they also become a permanent fixture on the face of the planet. The next time you have to go out and get new tupperware, consider getting something glass like pyrex, which has the added benefit of being completely safe to reheat your food in. Glass water bottles are also amazing, and your body will thank you for reducing the plastic you are exposed to. If your water smells like plastic when you are drinking it, it's definitely not doing your body any favors in the long run.
3. If you live in New England, Dunkin Donuts is almost a certainty. If you can, use reusable cups. All that Styrofoam and plastic adds up, especially if you are going on a daily basis. Many other coffee shops will give you a discount if you bring in a reusable travel mug. It's good for your wallet, and good for the environment.
4. Invest in silverware that you can bring to lunch. Using plastic forks all the time is convenient, especially if they are available at work, but once again unnecessary. It takes seconds to wash silverware.
5. Avoid hand and body washes with microbeads. These tiny pieces of plastic are unnecessary and insidious. Water that goes down drains often eventually finds its way to the ocean, where all of those tiny microbeads will float suspended in the water. Your hands will be just as clean without them.
6. Please, for the love of Earth, find a better way to drink water than buying crates and crates of plastic water bottles. I get it, public water is not always trustworthy (Flint is a glaring example of this injustice). Find another way to combat it in your own home. Invest in a filter, buy some glass water bottles, anything but generating 3 or 4 plastic bottles a day if you have another option. 
7. Keurigs have an almost religious following, but even the creator of the machines goes a bit green around the gills when he thinks of what the popularity of his product does to the environment. Using one pod made of plastic for one coffee cup is not sustainable. In fact, with the popularity of the machine, you can circle the world ten times by lining up all of the K-cups that are discarded in just one year. If you own a Keurig but aren't ready to give up the convenience, you can purchase reusable pods for the machine in which you can put your own coffee grounds or tea leaves. This is an infinitely better solution.

These are just a few simple steps, but they have a large impact on your plastic use. Of course, when you do generate plastic (how can you get food from the grocery store without plastic?) recycling is the best option. We live in a very plastic dependent society, and sometimes it is unavoidable, but replacing some of the plastic in your life with more sustainable materials is one of the healthiest things you can do for yourself and for the environment. Happy body, happy world.


PS: If you are interested in reading the scientific paper about the waxworms, you can find it here.

 

Took a Breath? Thank the Ocean

As I've started school, I've been reminded of how much I love the ocean. It's not the classes (although I've learned a lot) and it's not the excitement of pursuing discovery. A huge part of it is just coming in contact with the ocean. Every day, as I step out of my car, I stare at the Narragansett Bay as the clouds waft over the bridge and scuttle off to class as the biting sea breeze numbing my face reminds me how formidable New England can be in the winter.
It's been said before, but it continues to strike me how well the water holds its secrets. On the surface, an ocean in distress looks just like a healthy ocean (unless you are looking at huge blooms of algae, which does happen), so it's easy not to worry about it. My father grew up without seeing the ocean, and it wasn't until he married my sea-obsessed mother that he laid eyes on the vast expanse of the water. If you come from someplace inland, the plight of a far away body of salty water may feel very remote. After all, you aren't near it, you don't eat seafood, the salty breeze doesn't numb your face, and while you may have seen Jaws, your interaction with the inhabitants of the ocean has probably mostly centered around a childhood aquarium visit. If you live near a coast, you've probably enjoyed lobster or fresh fish and chips and have maybe gotten some pretty bad sunburns sitting by the crashing waves.
But I'm here to tell you something. Did you breath today? Did you yawn widely when you woke up? Did you inhale the smell of your coffee on the way to work? How many times have you breathed just reading this post? Well guess what. Just by breathing, you are interacting with the ocean, and it's time to say thank you.

Acadia Nation Park in October on a blustery day

About half of the oxygen in the air comes from the ocean. This is why famed marine biologist Sylvia Earle is known to say, "No water, no life." (Seriously, if you are looking to add another inspiring woman to your list of people to admire, look her up. She's incredible). What this means is that you, a human being living on land, are fundamentally sustained by the sea. Without it, we couldn't all be here today.
How does this happen? You can think of the ocean very much like you think of forests. Within the water, there are tons of single-celled organisms called phytoplankton. You can imagine them as tiny floating plants. One of my favorite varieties of phytoplankton are the diatoms, which are protected by a hard glass-like shell that frames their bodies. They are so beautiful that for years people would arrange them on slides to make artwork. Below is a photograph I took of Gomphonema, which is a freshwater diatom I found in our water samples from Lake Baikal. While you wouldn't find this particular diatom in the ocean, you would likely find many similar varieties.

A freshwater variety of Gomphonema from Lake Baikal

Diatoms and other phytoplankton come in a variety of shapes and species. Their density in the water can depend on temperature, nutrients (like nitrogen and phosphorus), the time of year, and even which part of the ocean you are looking at, but everywhere they are important. These miraculous little plankton go through the process of photosynthesis just like plants on land, taking carbon dioxide and water to create glucose (their food) with the energy of the sun, and in the process releasing oxygen. When you breathe this oxygen in, the cells in your body actually go through an opposite reaction, and you exhale carbon dioxide.

http://www3.syngenta.com/country/uk/en/about/learning-zone/KS345/biology/Pages/Photosynthesis_in_Action_Large.aspx

So even if the air you are breathing isn't salty, you are in a sense breathing in the ocean. Which brings me to the reason I am writing this blog. There are so many ways that we interact with the ocean every day that we don't even know about. If you ever read the book "The Giving Tree" as a child, you can think of our relationship a little like this. We go to the ocean, we say, "Oh ocean, we need some lobster to stock our New England restaurants," or maybe, "Oh ocean, we need your to delve into your depths to drill for oil," and also, "Oh ocean, we need your beauty to feed our souls on vacation as we snorkel through your reefs or surf in your waves." And just like the giving tree, the ocean gives as we keep asking. But if you remember the end of that book, at one point the tree is relegated to nothing more than a stump on which the old man sits, both of them a shadow of what they once were. This is not how I desire to see the ocean age with me.
In many ways, the ocean is in trouble. It's not something you can see on the surface. The waves are just as blue as they were when I ran into them as a child. Underneath it all, however, the ocean is changing, in no small part because of us. It's easy to go our whole lives without knowing exactly how we as individuals are impacting the planet, but that doesn't mean it isn't happening.
In the future, I'll talk about exactly how the ocean is changing and how we are largely the cause, as well as how we can better interact with the sea. For the moment, however, just take a breath, wherever you are, and consider the ocean.